Insane Nature

Posted on April 7, 2011 by benjaminfrog

One definition I heard of Insanity is to do the same thing over and over and expect a different outcome.
If this is true then I have an insane Red Cardinal roosting just outside of the house. He keeps flying face-first into the glass window – expecting a different outcome.

I suppose I could get some of those bird-shaped stickers for the window so he can see that there’s something in front of him, but it seems redundant since I’ve always got my curtains closed.

It would be funnier if he wasn’t waking me up in the morning. It’s as if he thinks he’s a rooster, but he doesn’t have the chops for it so he’s improvising.

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Making Murphy’s Law Work For You

Posted on April 4, 2011 by benjaminfrog

I’m not a superstitious person. I’m too logical for that. But I’m also too logical to ignore my life experience, and if your life experience is anything like mine, then you’ve probably come to the same conclusion that I and many other people have come to – that whatever can go wrong will go wrong.

Many people feel like the universe is out to get them. In my case I wouldn’t call it “the universe”, but it seems like something is out to get me. If nothing else, God has a warped sense of humour. Some people would say it’s God’s way of developing patience in me – to me it feels like cosmic hazing.

Whatever the cause may be, many of us have come to expect things to go wrong in certain ways and have tried to train ourselves to prepare for it. Some call this “pecimism,” pecimists call it “realism,” others might simply call it “British.” One example is this…

You’re waiting for something to happen, like the arrival of the bus for instance, and you originally thought it would happen pretty quickly so you didn’t bother to make yourself comfortable while you waited. But then the bus takes a lot longer to arrive than previously estimated. You are then left with two options: you can either make yourself comfortable, and then look like an idiot because the bus will show up as soon as you get comfy, OR you can continue to remain uncomfortable for a very long time. Because it’s only one or the other. (To some people this will sound like total nonsense, but people with certain life experience will know exactly what I’m talking about.)

Here’s the conclusion that I’ve come to…

If I truly believe that the universe is out to get me (and I’m not saying I do – I’m just making observations) and that the bus will arrive as soon as I make myself comfortable, just to spite me, then I must logically conclude that by making myself more comfortable I can cause the bus to arrive sooner. Crazy, right?

I’ve tested it, and this actually works! Not a hundred percent of the time, but often enough to be amusing. Sure, I may look like an idiot because I just got comfy only seconds before the bus arrived, but I’m laughing inside! And even when it doesn’t work, at least I’m more comfortable while I wait. I win either way!

I’m actually glad it doesn’t work every time, because then I probably would become a superstitious pecimist, instead of a mostly optimistic guy just making weird observations.

Of course, if you’re a truly superstitious person then testing this out probably won’t work because now that I’ve talked about it out loud I’ve jinxed it. Sorry ‘bout that.  : P

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The Wounds of Discovery

Posted on March 25, 2011 by benjaminfrog

My nephew Nate burnt his hand the other day. 😦

You know that thing where you tell a kid, “Don’t touch that. It’s hot,” and they touch it anyway, just because they need to verify that, yes, it is indeed very hot? It took Nate a little longer to verify it than most kids.

His hand is all bandaged up now. It’s expected to heal up okay. In the mean time, he’s learning to play Wii with one hand.

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The Latest Episode of Fringe

Posted on March 20, 2011 by benjaminfrog

(Obviously if you haven’t seen it then this whole post is a spoiler. Just to warn you.)

I’m concerned.

I wouldn’t mind Olivia switching personalities like that maybe once a season or so, but if they’re planning to make this a permanent thing now where she’s going to change back and forth in every episode every time a bell rings then I will become annoyed and disconnected.

I have to admit though, I get a certain amusement out of watching Olivia make subtly suggestive jokes and then chuckle like a dirty old man.

I was thinking it might work if Hurly filled in that position of being Bell’s vessel, if they are in fact planning to make him a permanent resident on the show. (Well…not Hurly, but the actor who played Hurly.)

Also, Peter has that big decision coming up. He has to choose between the two Olivias. You have to wonder what’s going on in his mind right now. “Hmm… My baby mama, or creepy old man…” Oh, wait, Peter doesn’t know yet. Shhh.

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Little Big Planet 2 – (week 7)

Posted on March 17, 2011 by benjaminfrog

If you’re not familiar with the Level Creation mechanics of Little Big Planet 2 then much of this will be foreign language. My apologies.

As I mentioned in my previous blog, the first thing I got focused on when I started playing Little Big Planet 2 was making various weapons – and things to destroy with those weapons.

One of my early inventions was a Creatinator that fires metal fists a short distance in rapid succession, giving the appearance of punching really fast. I put a Tag on the fist and then programmed all my destructible objects and enemies to take damage whenever they make contact with something with that Tag. Most of my work since then has been creating environments that either make good fight locations, or are just a lot of fun to destroy by punching the tard out of everything. I’ve been attempting to simulate scenes from films like Kill Bill, Inception, Lethal Weapon 4 and House Of flying Daggers, with very entertaining results. No Matrix scenes yet, but I’ve got that idea on the shelf.

My Ninjas still aren’t very energetic but they’re getting more diverse. In addition to the basic, fists-only Ninja, I now have knife-throwing Ninjas, Claw Ninjas, rare Golden Ninjas (worth 1,000 points if you kill them before they vanish), Liquid Ninjas (based on T-1000) and Ninja Zombies. I’ve even got a Ninja that jumps now. …It just wasn’t a priority before. The programming to get the Liquid Ninjas to split into four blobs that come together and reform the full Liquid Ninja took me a while to figure out.

Over the past week I’ve started working on Power-Ups – objects that will emit different Creatinators when they sense the player. There is now a fist with Wolverine-like claws attached to it, a Golden Fist that causes enemies to explode on impact, a Thunder Fist that causes bolts of lightning to strike whatever it hits, mechanical War Gauntlets that home in on enemies and explode, and a tiny “1-Inch-Punch” for close-quarters fighting.
I’ve decided to add a room to one of the later levels where all of those powerups are spat out randomly during a fight with a random assortment of Ninjas. It’s pretty funny.

BTW: The game froze on me for the first time as I was designing a Riverdancing Ninja. The idea being that with the Gyroscope tool I could make the upper body completely still while the feet flew about in random directions. It was going well until I tested it for combat. After meteor showers, lightning fists, spinning hallways, liquid metal, spaceships and zombie ninjas, the thing that ended up breaking the game’s mind was riverdancing.

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The Snot Stage

Posted on March 11, 2011 by benjaminfrog

I’ve entered into what I refer to as the “Snot Stage” of my current cold. Most refer to it as the “Sniffles”, which is less direct.

This is the stage that I always look forward to. Compared to the Sore Throat and Repetative Coughing stages, the Snot Stage is a virtual oasis in the desert that is the common cold. There’s less pain, I can hold a conversation, my appetite is back up, and everything tastes saltier. Everytime I get sick now I always think, “I can’t wait for the Snot Stage!”

I just sneezed on my keyboard…that’s disturbing.

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Single-Mindedness

Posted on March 10, 2011 by benjaminfrog

In strong cases of autism, when the individual spends most of their time in their own world (as I did) they may not be aware that other people have their own individual thoughts.

I can think back to a time when I had a similar assumption. My own thoughts were the only thoughts that existed and nobody outside of my own world had any thoughts of their own. This leads one to conclude that everybody knows everything they know, and therefore it eliminates the need to communicate.

Much of my frustration in early childhood came from the people around me not immediately solving whatever problem I had. If I had a problem, I knew about it, and therefore everybody else knew about it, so why hasn’t somebody done something about it yet?

I haven’t gotten to personally know many people with autism, but I have noticed this theme. We tend to assume that people know what’s wrong, and that if nobody’s fixed the problem yet then it’s because nobody cares, it’s not due to a lack of us explaining that there’s a problem. Or we tend to come to people with half a story, because we assume they know the rest of it already.

It’s not exactly like the Borg. I didn’t believe that everyone in the world shared a single consciousness. I just didn’t think anybody produced their own thoughts apart from my own mind.

When I was a around six I remember wondering if my negative emotions had any affect on the people around me. But even that was progress. At least I was aware that people might have different feelings than me.

Lately I’ve been trying to communicate better when I’m having a problem, instead of waiting to see if people figure it out on their own (because my face is often neutral anyway and people can’t always tell there’s a problem just by observing me). I’m also trying not to come to people with just half a story.

My struggle right now is remembering what conversations I’ve had with who and whether or not a certain piece of information is a surprise or old news. I never had this problem in my teens because I didn’t know many people. Now I’m slowly getting to know a lot of people and it gets overwhelming at times. It’s awkward to do inside jokes when you can’t remember who’s inside. But whenever a joke of mine is answered with silence, I take solace in the knowledge that God gets it. 🙂

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Rapid Fire Reviews

Posted on March 4, 2011 by benjaminfrog

This is not to approve or disapprove any of these movies, necessarily, and it’s not to say that some of these movies don’t deserve more detailed reviews in the future. I just wanna try something different – so here it goes.

Dumb & Dumber: One of the greatest dream sequences in movie history.

Little Shop Of Horrors (1986): Few villains will serenade you with a catchy song and back-up singers while trying to kill you.

The Quest (Jean-Claude Van Damme): A guy from France, trained in Thailand, enters a tournament representing America.

2001 Space Odyssey: It’s a bit slow.

The Chinese Connection: “I have an idea – let’s beat them up.”

The Protector (Tony Jaa) : It’s like that elephant episode of The Simpsons gone out of hand.

Kill Bill Vol.1: It’s like Mortal Kombat on steroids.

Monsters Vs. Aliens: Bob annoys me. He’s presented as not having a brain, but his style of stupidity is more suited to someone who has a brain but puts information together wrong. There’s a difference!

Year One: This would’ve been better if it stayed a ridiculous comedy and didn’t suddenly try to be emotional and serious.

Rocky II: The entire movie felt like a two-hour “re-do” of the previous ending – as if they needed to go back and fix it.

Kung Fu Panda: I was impressed to see such good fight choreography in a cartoon.

Ghost Town: They never explained how the naked guy died.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula: It’s funny watching Keanu Reeves not notice things.

Raging Bull: I’m sure it wasn’t meant as a comedy but these guys are histerical.

Iron Man 2: The best part is Black Widow.

1408: This guy responds to things the way a real person would, which made him a more relatable character.

Pet Sematary: That’s a ridiculously cute kid. Even when he’s not supposed to be cute he’s still ridiculously cute.

The Book of Eli: I think it should’ve ended with The Wanderer by Johnny Cash.

Inception: A lot of potential for interesting and unique action sequences – but the action never quite got to the point of blowing my mind.

The Expendables: That’s an image of Sylvester Stallone that I want to forget very quickly.

MacGruber: Now I’ve got Broken Wings stuck in my head.

The Karate Kid (2010): Jackie Chan beats up a bunch of kids. Fun.

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Location

Posted on February 23, 2011 by benjaminfrog

I was watching a home renovation show with my mother when I heard a guy say that the hardest thing to find is location. Which got me thinking of similar weird sentences.

“Location is always in the last place you look.”

“It’s like finding a location in a haystack.”

MISSING: Have you seen this location?

That’s all I got so far. But it’s after midnight and I have a headache, so that’s my excuse. 🙂

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Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs – (a film review)

Posted on February 20, 2011 by benjaminfrog

Are you surprised that I even gave this movie the time of day? So was I. I had finished watching something I’d recorded, and this movie just happened to be on at that time. Before I realized what I was watching, a few genuinely funny things happened, so I continued watching just to kill a few miniutes. I quickly realized I would want to watch the whole thing from the beginning, and set my PVR to record it the next time it came on.

The name alone suggests that it’s going to be a lame movie that only young kids would get a laugh out of. The animation style and the fact that it’s available in 3-D doesn’t help. What I did not know until I saw the credits was that this movie was done by the same people behind Clone High U.S.A. – a very adult cartoon sitcom that draws much of its humour from messed up dialogue and social awkwardness – which is exactly my kind of humour. And even though the jokes in this movie are kid-friendly, the writers didn’t lose any of the impact of their style of humour.

If you’ve seen Clone High U.S.A. then you’ll recognize the writing style. The interactions between the main dude and main chick in this movie are almost a perfect mirror of Abe and Joan.

It’s unfortunate that this movie came across as lame and pre-schooly in its advertisements. I think it’s missing a big portion of its potential audience because of that. Kids will watch it because it’s a mild adventure story about giant food raining from the sky – adults will enjoy it because it makes a great comedy. But unless you have kids, you’ve probably avoided this movie as I did.

Something else that occured to me as I watched it was the surprising lack of innuendo. Most movies that are written for both kids and adults contain some degree of innuendo that will go over the kids’ heads but gives the grown-ups something to giggle about – and then tell the kid that they’ll explain it when they’re older. Shrek is notorious for that. Many parents feel uncomfortable letting their child watch movies with hidden sex jokes – no matter how well they’re hidden. You don’t have to worry about that with Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs. I could find no innuendo in this film. And I’m a guy who tends to think in terms of “That’s what she said”. Apart from a hinted joke about poop, this movie is very clean, which is another thing I have to give them props for. (…Unless it all just went over my head…)

If 3-D televisions were cheaper, I would recommend watching this movie in 3-D. Instead, the best I can recommend is mooching off of a rich friend and watching it at their place. I haven’t seen it in 3-D myself but I can tell from the cinematography that they put a lot of thought into the 3-D effects.

It’s also worth multiple viewings. There are a lot of jokes I didn’t catch the first time around – many of them to do with England.

Best disaster movie ever!

(I say that as someone who hates disaster movies. But in this case it’s a compliment. If for no other reason, it’s the only disaster movie I’ve ever liked.)

(JOKE SPOILER) I was in the middle of drinking when Sam Sparks said, “America! Hi! I didn’t see you there.” Long story short, I had to change my shirt.

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